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The airframe for Japan’s proposed indigenous fighter is for now only a concept, but the engine is turning into actual hardware. Government defense engineers are this month beginning testing the core of the advanced turbofan for the proposed 2030s fighter.

Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, has responded to Tokyo’s request for information on alternatives for its Future Fighter. The company says it has offered no specific type, though the F-35 Lightning, already on order for the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, must be a prospective candidate, probably in modified form.

The indigenous fighter would be much bigger than the F-35, with a twin engine installation. The turbofan is the XF9-1, says the defense ministry’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA), naming the engine for the first time. Maximum thrust with afterburning, previously stated as 15 metric tons (33,000 lb.), is now said to be above that level, but the exact figure has not been disclosed. Maximum dry thrust will be more than 11 metric tons.

Considering how few countries have the technology to build advanced and powerful aeroengines, this is a notably ambitious program. Japan has previously developed no combat aircraft engine bigger than the XF5-1 demonstrator, which generates less than a third of the XF9-1’s thrust.

Japan’s aerospace propulsion specialist, IHI Corp., is the main contractor for the engine program and the XF5-1. IHI built the core and performed functional testing on it before delivery to ATLA on June 28. “Testing at the ATLA will begin in July to verify its performance,” says the agency. A full demonstrator engine is to be completed by the end of June 2018, it adds, confirming and refining a schedule published in 2015.

The agency’s predecessor, the Technical Research and Development Institute, said in 2010 that it wanted to pursue this program as part of a technology-acquisition effort for a possible indigenous combat aircraft, what is now an option for the Future Fighter program that would replace the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) F-2 in the 2030s. The airframe design has been studied extensively but will not be built unless and until the government goes ahead with full-scale development of the fighter.

The XF9-1 demonstrator is due to be complete by the end of June 2018. Credit: Japanese Defense Ministry

IHI says it was contracted in 2010 to study components for the engine and in 2013 to build the core, which comprises the high-pressure compressor, combustor and high-pressure turbine. The core was preceded by a compressor and combustor, each tested independently. The complete demonstrator XF9-1 will be built under a 2015 contract.

It will have a diameter at the inlet of about 1 m (39 in.), compared with the 1.2-m maximum diameter of the General Electric F110. A drawing of the XF9-1 suggests that the case downstream of the inlet is only a little wider than the inlet, if at all, though accessories will add to width and depth, as usual. The length of the XF9-1 will be about 4.8 m. The core is about 1.5 m long. The quoted thrust levels are for the static, sea level condition.

If published material is taken at face value, the design has lost a previously intended feature, three rows of fixed and variable inlet guide vanes that would have acted together as a radar blocker, impeding radio-frequency energy on its way to and from the compressor. A 2011 illustration showed that feature, but more recent pictures, including the latest, depict a conventional single row of inlet guide vanes. The usual type of radar blocker, which Japan has worked on, is not part of the engine but rather is installed in the inlet duct upstream from it.

Other key features from the early design of the engine remain: a three-stage low-pressure compressor, six stages in the high-pressure compressor and single-stage high- and low-pressure turbines. Those features, and the counter-rotation of the low- and high-pressure spools, match the configuration of the Pratt & Whitney F119 of the Lockheed Martin F-22.

A 3D vectoring exhaust nozzle, directing thrust up or down as well as to one side or the other, is planned.

Average temperature at the turbine inlet will be 1,800C (3,300F), ATLA says, repeating an earlier figure. At least early in development, in the 1980s, the Pratt & Whitney F119 had a temperature at the combustor exit, just upstream from the high-pressure turbine, of about 1,600C. The same company’s F135 engine, fitted to the Lockheed Martin F-35, operates at about 2,000C.

Japan is due to decide between the indigenous fighter and the alternatives in fiscal 2018. Since the government will presumably first want to see the results of testing of the complete demonstrator engine, a decision late in the fiscal year is likely.

Lockheed Martin has proposed an improved version of the F-35, says the Nikkei, a reliable newspaper. But the company says it has not gone as far as suggesting any particular model. It submitted a draft response to a ministry request for information at the end of June “which did not provide any specific offering of aircraft type,” a spokesman for Lockheed Martin says. “The Japanese ministry of defense continues to define their requirements for the F-2 replacement and discussions between U.S. and Japanese government offices are ongoing.”

Nonetheless, an upgraded F-35 is an obvious possibility for Future Fighter. The manufacturer would be keen for Japan to pay for improvements that would support extended production, while commonality with Japan’s F-35As would cut the country’s operating costs. Most importantly, starting with the current design should greatly reduce the expense of development.

Indeed, the Nikkei says that adapting an existing design is the cheapest of three options for the Future Fighter, the others being developing an aircraft independently and doing so with another country. It cites no sources and notably fails to mention an even cheaper possibility that the government has been considering: importation of an unmodified fighter type.

MHI is assembling most of the 42 F-35As that Japan is buying. It could be expected to undertake any necessary development, fabrication and assembly of the airframe for an updated, specifically Japanese version, which would presumably be called the F-35J.

The Lightning in its current form is rather distant from the ideal of Japanese defense ministry engineers for a 2030s fighter. Their concept for an all-new aircraft includes internal carriage of six long-range air-to-air missiles, such as MBDA Meteors, and two of short range. Looking for great range and endurance, they have produced concept designs for a fighter larger than the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and much larger than the F-35.

Britain is integrating the Meteor on the F-35, but the U.S. fighter will carry no more than four such weapons internally, and then with no room for short-range air-to-air missiles. Lockheed Martin could conceivably improve the F-35’s range and endurance with external tanks, perhaps conformal and at some cost to stealth. It could also fit the lightest Lightning version, the F-35A, with the bigger and more voluminous wing of the F-35C, the variant designed for catapult launch and arrested recovery at sea.

Japanese avionics would also be possible for an F-35J. Israel will at least load its own software on its version, the F-35I.

In June 2016, the Japanese defense ministry sought information from aircraft manufacturers about three possibilities for the fighter program: creating a new type, modifying an existing one or importing.

The possibility of international joint development has since emerged as a variation on the first option. Britain and Japan agreed in March to look at the possibility of jointly creating a fighter for the 2030s; BAE Systems would be the obvious partner for MHI, while Rolls-Royce would work with IHI. Sweden’s ambassador to Tokyo says Japan should consider Saab, too.

The F-2 was a modification of an existing type, the Lockheed Martin F-16. The U.S. company supported the development effort.

The manufacturers have agreed to supply the weapons, says the office, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), presumably meaning that terms have been settled. But there is no mention of government permissions for exporting the missiles. The Meteor and IRIS-T are long- and short-range air-to-air missiles, respectively.

South Korea also plans to use the most equivalent U.S. weapons, the AIM-120 Amraam and AIM-9 Sidewinder. Negotiations for integration of those missiles are not complete, DAPA says in a program briefing issued this month.

Washington agreed in June to give South Korea technical information on its two air-to-air missiles and nine other U.S. weapons, but this will only be data of the level called 1A: size, weight and basic interface particulars.

South Korea is still seeking level 1B information: full interface data needed for integrating and operating the weapons.

The twin-engine KF-X is intended to fly in 2022. The air force has said it expects to receive the first unit in 2024, though that target looks implausible. It leaves little time for flight testing and is now revealed to be two years before the scheduled completion of radar development.

Full-scale development of the KF-X began in late 2015 after years of national debate. One objective is to free South Korea from depending on Washington’s permission in integrating weapons, as it must when it buys fighters straight from the U.S. and would if it equipped the KF-X with U.S. avionics.

A related objective is to avoid the U.S. vetoing an export contract for the KF-X by withholding the weapons from the intended customer. But the fighter will be subject to U.S. export controls, anyway, above all because it will use the General Electric F414 turbofan.

Further, South Korea still needs permission of Germany to use the IRIS-T and the countries behind the MBDA consortium—Britain, France and Italy—for the Meteor. There is no indication of when government authorization will be received.

Elsewhere in the program a critical foreign authorization has been received. In April Washington said Indonesia, the junior program partner, could have access to U.S. technology used in KF-X development.

Lockheed Martin is supporting KF-X development as a condition of the selection of the company’s F-35 Lightning for the separate F-X Phase 3 fighter import program. Lockheed Martin has sent 30 engineers to KAI, DAPA says. By the end of the year that number will grow to 40. Indonesia has sent 80 engineers to KAI.

South Korea is developing four major avionics systems for the KF-X: a radar with an active electronically scanned array (AESA); an infrared search-and-track system; an electro-optical targeting pod; and a electronic warfare suite.

Radar development is due to be completed by 2026 at a cost of 360 billion won ($320 million), DAPA says, revealing that the aircraft cannot be delivered to the air force in 2024. The sensor will have around 1,000 transmit-and-receive modules. Critical design review for the radar is due in mid-2019.

Hanwha and the defense ministry’s Agency for Defense Development are building what they call a hardware demonstration model, combining a Hanhwa AESA antenna and power supply with a receiver-exciter and processor from Elta. The Israeli company was chosen this year to validate Hanwha’s radar development program, but its role evidently will be rather deeper than that.

Hanwha completed the antenna and power supply in June, DAPA says, adding that the two components will be sent to Elta in September for assembly into a complete radar that will be tested until March 2018.

Another item, called AESA technology demonstration equipment, has been built. Tested in the back of a C-130H transport with the rear door open, it had around 400 transmit-and-receive modules.

Japan has to decide whether to pursue a fighter or not. It has been developing and investing heavily in R&D to provide options but they may not go into it at all. Their plans are more ambitious and cover propulsion and other high end systems. They have invited collaborative and other design proposals from global aerospace firms but will likely hold off for a couple of years. KAI and the ROKAF have had export success with the F/A-50 so they may have an installed base of fighters to upgrade provided they can get this right..which is easier said than done.

Meanwhile the political landscape has changed. China has fielded a 5th generation fighter and is acquiring (and will shortly be producing clones of) the Su-35. South Korea has acquired the F-35 and is developing the KF-X. This leaves Japan with 3 paths. One is to pursue a clean sheet domestic 5th generation aircraft. Another is to do what KAI is doing i.e. rope in foreign OEMs. The third is to build more F-35s and collaborate with the US on the NGAD (which I assume would be the Navy version since the USAF will likely size itself out of the export market). The political barriers that existed with the F-22A sale no longer do given the capability fielded by others in the region.

The first option benefits their industry and capability the most but it will be insanely expensive given the amount of money required to execute a full fledged program and then produce a relatively small quantity of aircraft. This will likely have to compete with other purely indigenous efforts over the next 10-20 years in areas such as under-sea warfare, Maritime Patrol Aircraft and other weapons. Unless they increase their budgets significantly those programs will directly compete with a potential clean sheet F-X fighter for them. They most likely deliberately structured their R&D effort to give them a few years between work on the Shin Shin and when they have to fully commit to a path. This gives them the space needed to decide the best course of action.

The U.S. Air Force plans to expedite the development and integration of an air-launched hypersonic strike weapon that would be carried by fighters and bombers. The service is soliciting proposals from a select group of defense contractors and plans to award a contract by the end of the year.

The conventional, precision-guided hypersonic weapon will provide a strike capability against “high-value, time-critical fixed and relocatable surface targets” in contested environments, the Air Force said in a July 21 public notice. It seeks capability statements from interested contractors by August 4.

Hypersonic speed is five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) and beyond. According to the notice, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Missile Systems and Orbital ATK “are the only firms that appear to possess the necessary capability within the Air Force's time frame without causing an unacceptable delay in meeting the needs of the warfighter.”

Last fall, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) awarded Raytheon and Lockheed Martin contracts of $174 million and $171 million, respectively, to conduct research under its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program with the Air Force. The intent of that program is “to emphasize efficient, rapid and affordable flight tests to validate key technologies,” Darpa has said.

Under a provision of federal acquisition regulations called “Other Than Full and Open Competition,” the Air Force expects to award a contract for required work through the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2018, covering the months of October through December. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting authority.

brar_w wrote:Japan has to decide whether to pursue a fighter or not. It has been developing and investing heavily in R&D to provide options but they may not go into it at all. Their plans are more ambitious and cover propulsion and other high end systems. They have invited collaborative and other design proposals from global aerospace firms but will likely hold off for a couple of years. KAI and the ROKAF have had export success with the F/A-50 so they may have an installed base of fighters to upgrade provided they can get this right..which is easier said than done.

Meanwhile the political landscape has changed. China has fielded a 5th generation fighter and is acquiring (and will shortly be producing clones of) the Su-35. South Korea has acquired the F-35 and is developing the KF-X. This leaves Japan with 3 paths. One is to pursue a clean sheet domestic 5th generation aircraft. Another is to do what KAI is doing i.e. rope in foreign OEMs. The third is to build more F-35s and collaborate with the US on the NGAD (which I assume would be the Navy version since the USAF will likely size itself out of the export market). The political barriers that existed with the F-22A sale no longer do given the capability fielded by others in the region.

The first option benefits their industry and capability the most but it will be insanely expensive given the amount of money required to execute a full fledged program and then produce a relatively small quantity of aircraft. This will likely have to compete with other purely indigenous efforts over the next 10-20 years in areas such as under-sea warfare, Maritime Patrol Aircraft and other weapons. Unless they increase their budgets significantly those programs will directly compete with a potential clean sheet F-X fighter for them. They most likely deliberately structured their R&D effort to give them a few years between work on the Shin Shin and when they have to fully commit to a path. This gives them the space needed to decide the best course of action.

I think the Japanese will go on with their own design with a heavy help from US MIC - a sort of middle path between the 1st and 2nd option you suggested. The engine they are making looks superb on paper, on par or even slightly better than F119 (given the tech advancement in last 2 decades that shouldn't be surprize, but still a huge huge achievement if they can finish it). The other day I saw a nice paper on CMC applications from Japanese folks. Impressive stuff. And as you pointed out, given the changing geo-political picture, I think they have a good enough reason to justify the cost on development of new 5th Gen. Particularly when US is seen to be conceding space to China in that region. And IMO, even US might think of it as a good sign and would encourage Japan to do so, by giving a free hand with help on development.

Their problem has been cost and competing priorities. Can they self fund and sustain a $20+ Billion program over the next decade? What else will they have to give up to do so (in terms of other investment tracks). This is probably why they had designed a program the way they have so they have options around the turn of the decade. They'll probably double their F-35A order so that it covers all of their F-4s and some of the F-15Js as well but beyond they really have to have stable investment and demand. A sub 150 or 200 production run with a $20+ Billion developmental budget is not going to be affordable and will require significant offsets in other indigenous developmental priorities. This, even with a hybrid path where they collaborate.

They always wanted the F-22, and would have had it operational by 2008 or so had it been approved. But moving on, will the same requirements work in the 2030s? From an economic perspective they are probably better served by focusing their investments in the undersea and maritime domains and producing weapons for their warships and aircraft. You need volume to bring cost down on advanced fighter projects or else you end up like the F-22A with its cost (if not higher) but 15-20 years after it seized production.

Lets wait and watch how things pan out. But I am rather impressed with the way the Japanese are strengthening their Aerospace capabilities steadily across the board. I wonder if India has any good chance of collaboration with Japan in some places.

japan should be able to finish the engine. despite some hiccups their H2 heavy lifter is doing ok now. access to most tech from massa is not a problem and mitsubishi and kawasaki have good ties with boeing being part of its ecosystem. materials, maths and tools are not a problem.

they have finished their 4 engine LRMP recently. and the civilian plane looks sweet too.

embraer and bombardier will have to fight it out with cheen, japan and russia coming with new planes.

Singha wrote:embraer and bombardier will have to fight it out with cheen, japan and russia coming with new planes.

Sure they will have to. In this iteration they have a lead. Perhaps for another decade they can maintain it, but after that we should see some consolidation (may be even M&A, who knows) in this space. There is simply not enough space for so many players in the market. Fokker already bowed out from here, and got sold.

A part of the blame for failure to run fully outsourcing model lies with the OEMs themselves. They do not share enough product knowledge they are outsourcing to suppliers and do not even provide system level big picture. This restricts the suppliers' ability to understand the product or component they make properly and improve on it or adapt their own working to produce good quality output. A lot of tier 2/3 suppliers who get make to print parts do not even have half decent engineering capabilities. There is little economic insentive or scope to improve on their own. In such scenario the OEM sometimes end up putting up more efforts in quality control than had they make the parts in-house. Of course the situations change secotrwise or supplier to supplier. But this is a generic issue I have seen. If OEMs want quality supply chain they need to help suppliers in understanding the components better and sharing some more and also giving some economical freedom. Too tight control and OEMs would end up in troubles with suppliers easily.

Nothing unique about what is mentioned in the article. _Populated T/R modules on an array and packaging T/R module assemblies into TRIMMs is a widely prevalent practice across all of the phased array radar market.

Lockheed Martin unveils its next generation air and missile defence radar demonstrator at the annual Space & Missile Defense Symposium this week in Huntsville, Alabama. The active electronically scanned array (AESA) Radar for Engagement and Surveillance (ARES) is a representative full-scale prototype of the technology to support a modern, 360-degree capable sensor that the US Army will use to address current and emerging air and ballistic missile threats.

This fractional array is representative of Lockheed Martin's potential Lower Tier Air & Missile Defense Sensor solution, built on a modular and scalable architecture to scale to the Army's requirements, once finalised, to replace the aging PATRIOT MPQ-65 radar. The array on display in Huntsville will be used to mature technology and verify performance to ensure uniform 360 degree threat detection and system performance.

"Incremental upgrades to the existing PATRIOT radar no longer address current sustainment issues, current threat performance shortcomings, or provide growth for future and evolving threats," said Mark Mekker, director of next generation radar systems at Lockheed Martin. "Lockheed Martin is prepared to offer a next generation missile defense system that will leverage advances in radar technology to provide a modular, scalable architecture and reduce the total cost of ownership well over its 30 year lifecycle."

Lockheed Martin's AESA technology incorporates gallium nirtride (GaN) transmitter technology and advanced signal processing techniques including recently developed and proven 360 degree sensor/fire control algorithms based on advanced threat sets. These technologies and concepts have been fully integrated into both demonstration and production systems resulting in the industry's first fielded ground based radars with GaN technology.

The AESA technology is also in use in the AN/TP/Q-53 radar system, which Lockheed Martin designed, developed and delivered to the US Army on an urgent need timeline in under 36 months, and which continues to be scaled to address emerging threats.

"Our solution for the US Army's new air and missile defence sensor is not a new-start programme. It's a combination of technology maturation over several years and includes capability leveraged from our current development programmes and battlefield-proven radars. We rely heavily on our modern radar systems such as the Q-53 and the Long Range Discrimination Radar to rapidly bring low-risk, proven technology to the warfighter," Mekker said. "We look forward to the opportunity to participate in this competition that will ultimately drive up performance and reduce costs for the US Army."

A fractional antenna demonstrator that they will size based on prime power and radar performance specifications that are going to accompany the final RFP early next year.

I don't see the US Army accepting a rotating array but it is clearly what Lockheed wants to offer given its past experience on AESA projects. The last time they looked at rotating array based DBF radars they ended up with a trade space of 3 radars per battery (MEADS) to support the most stressing mission (Concurrent TBM and AAW)

Mods: I can remove the above if it violates forum rule of posting artciles which require registration.

It is hard to find a more divisive topic in the aerospace world than the Lockheed Martin F-35. Aviation Week Pentagon Editor Lara Seligman sat down with two industry veterans who hold opposite views on the fighter: Marine Corps Lt. Col. (ret.) Dave Berke, a former Top Gun instructor, has flown the F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18; and Pierre Sprey, of “Fighter Mafia” fame, helped conceptualize designs for the A-10 and F-16. Excerpts follow.

Seligman: Lockheed Martin and U.S. Air Force pilots contend that the maneuvers we saw at the Paris Air Show laid to rest the rumors that the F-35 can’t dogfight. Pierre, do you think that’s true?

Sprey: That was nonsense, just marketing hype. The demo was as phony as all the other [air show] demos are. They had a super-light F-35, and the performance wasn’t all that impressive. I talked to a guy who prepped an A-10 for the air show, and they did the same thing—they [made] it so light it actually looked super maneuverable, which it’s not, except at low speed. The F-35’s turn rate was not impressive. It was [much] slower than a 30-year-old F-16. An engineer friend of mine clocked it at 17 deg. per second. Any old F-16 can do 22 [deg. per second].

Berke: I would not disagree. Air show demos are exactly that, a demonstration. I think part of the reason this demo got so much publicity is there has been a long-held misunderstanding of what the airplane can do in the visual arena. People have made claims that it’s incapable of dogfighting and things like that. It is a highly capable, highly maneuverable airplane, like everybody who has ever flown it understands.

Sprey: The airplane that flew at Paris was totally incapable of combat. And that’s not just me talking; that’s the operational testers of the Air Force, Navy and the Marines. In their assessment, the configuration that was flying in Paris, to go to war, would need an escort to protect it against enemy fighters. It would need extra help to find targets, particularly air-to-ground threats.

Seligman: How does the F-35’s networking capability change the game for warfare?

Berke: I can’t think of any airplane that we’re flying today that would want to get into a dogfight. I would avoid that in any platform. F-22 pilots don’t fly around looking for dogfights. Part of the reason why the F-35 and the F-22 have such a massive advantage over legacy platforms is their ability to make really intelligent decisions. You’re getting information presented to you on a much larger scale, and it’s fused more intelligently.

All my career, I’ve flown fighters, and flown them in combat, and I was a forward air controller. It’s all about making an intelligent decision as soon as you can. It is really difficult for me to overstate what a massive advantage you have in decision-making in the F-35. I don’t know a single pilot—and I know a lot of F-35 pilots—that would even consider taking a legacy platform into combat. The F-35 advantage over these platforms is infinitely greater.

Sprey: The original marketing hype, both out of the services and Lockheed Martin, was always “It’s a great dogfighter; it’s a great close-support platform.” In truth it can’t do any of those missions very well because, like all multimission airplanes it’s highly flawed, and the technical execution of this airplane is unusually bad by historical standards. I agree with [Lt.] Col. Berke that no airplane looks for a dogfight. On the other hand, in serious wars sometimes you can’t avoid it. The F-35 is a horrible target if it has to get into a dogfight. It’s got an enormously high wing load. It’s almost as unmaneuverable as the infamous F-104.

All that networking stuff, if it worked, would make the pilot smarter and more situationally aware. But right now it is an impediment, and it might be a permanent impediment given the cyber [threat], which is horrible for this airplane. All that reliance on networking is giving inferior, less well-funded, less equipped enemies a tremendous opportunity, because the airplane is so vulnerable to all kinds of cybermeddling. The people we might face—Chinese, Russians, Yugoslavs, whomever—are all pretty clever with computers. We’ve given them a tremendous opportunity to wreck our airpower for almost no money.

Berke: I would disagree with virtually all of that. The idea that there are things wrong with the airplane is 100% true, but the idea [that] does not work is 100% not true. To fuse broadband multispectral information, [radio frequency], electro-optical infrared, laser infrared and laser energies among several cockpits, ground users and sea-based platforms is really complicated stuff. And so there are things wrong with the airplane. I don’t know a single [F-35] pilot that would deny that. But the idea that you would read some sort of report on the airplane’s performance and then draw the conclusion that it is broken forever is a leap. We inside the community haven’t done a good job of explaining how amazing the airplane is.

You could bring 100 people into this room and ask what warfare is going to look like in 30 years, and you’re going to get 100 different answers. If I hear somebody talking about dogfighting, that person is not thinking about the future. And if I hear somebody say “wing loading,” that’s a red flag that you are thinking about the wrong things. Among every Marine, Air Force and Navy [F-35] pilot I know who came from a legacy aircraft—Hornets, F-15s, F-16s—there is no debate about what is the most capable aircraft they’ve ever flown and what they would take into combat tomorrow.

Seligman: What are the difficulties posed by what is known as concurrency—the process of producing F-35s and testing them before system development is complete?

Sprey: The testing that has taken place so far is very benign. It’s engineering testing—there has not been any rough testing yet—and the airplane has performed very badly on a whole score of issues. They’re not flying against any stressful scenarios for the simple reason that the Joint Program Office is sabotaging the operational tests, and this is very deliberate. Because if you fail, the [program] might be canceled.

I have mixed feelings about pilots being so enthusiastic about their airplanes. It is very common now, because the services are so wound up with procurement, and people critical of their equipment tend to have shorter careers. I think you want to be skeptical about everything you work with. You don’t want to be a true believer going into combat and wind up hanging from a parachute, or dead.

Berke: The idea that any professional uniformed officer, let alone a fighter pilot, would somehow find themselves unprepared for the horrors of combat because they were illusively in love with their equipment is preposterous. I’ve [been] a Top Gun instructor, and we would spend 8 hr. debriefing a flight. All you do is talk about things you did wrong, your strengths, your weaknesses, how to mitigate one and play to the others. If you are going to ask a fighter pilot who has done operational testing what their opinion is, the idea that even one shred of what they say is a party-line answer would be offensive. I’ve spent 23 years as a U.S. Marine, and never once did I get the implication that I shouldn’t be completely honest with my evaluation.

The F-35 has good and bad things about it. In the operational test world, we are focused on making the airplanes better. We spend our time on a laundry list of things that need to be improved. When every single pilot that has taken the airplanes into highly complex [exercises] at Red Flag and at places like Nellis [AFB, Nevada,] comes back with overwhelming dominance, it’s difficult not to be really supportive. So if you hear pilots saying the F-35 is awesome, it’s not a sales pitch. It’s steeped in a long history of flying several different airplanes in different environments.

Seligman: F-35 procurement costs have come down in the last couple of years, but this year they ticked up slightly to $406 billion from about $380 billion.

Sprey: Cost is part of what force you can bring to bear. To create airpower, you have to be able to put a bunch of airplanes in the sky over the enemy. You can’t do it with a tiny handful, even if they are unbelievably good. You send six airplanes to China, they could care less about what they are. F-22 deployments are now six airplanes, and that’s because of the cost. Force is a function of cost and how reliable the airplane is, how often it flies per day.

If you bought F-16s at the same budget, $400 billion, instead of F-35s, you’d be able to buy five times more airplanes. It is five times as expensive and flies at best half as often. My feeling is it will fly less often than an F-22—it is a good deal more complicated than an F-22, and it’s showing that right now. If that’s the case, it may fly once every five days, in which case if will fly one-fifth as often as the F-16.

Berke: I don’t care how cheap the airplane is; if you can’t fly it in combat, it is useless. We are inventing technology that didn’t exist before, and it’s all driven toward the idea of being relevant in a highly complex, 3D battlespace that we have a hard time predicting even for the next 15 years. I don’t want to buy a car that’s cheaper and then have that car not be drivable in three years. The fact is the Chinese [are developing] fifth-generation airplanes. They are building and buying [them] right now, and that’s going to make air warfare complicated. [The F-35 is] too expensive? That’s easy to say. Compared to what? Losing a war in 15 years? Or compared to an F-16 in 1977? Make sure you get that frame of reference right, because it is really important.

The company’s missile systems division in Tucson, Arizona, is pitching the U.S. Navy’s Standard Missile for the land force. But don’t get this proposal confused with an Army-green Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile site, because Raytheon wants the Army to deploy SM-3 and SM-6 on relocatable or mobile launchers and integrate those with existing air and missile defense fire control systems.

Dean Gehr, Raytheon’s director for the land-based Standard Missile, says SM-3 is the U.S.’s longest-range interceptor for regional missile defense and SM-6 is the longest-range air defense weapon. The latest multi-mission version of the radar-guided SM-6 can destroy aircraft, ballistic missiles and even ships.

“You’ve got a lot of capability in the SM-3 and SM-6, so why not bring that capability ashore?” Gehr tells Aviation Week at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here on Aug. 9. “It already is ashore as part of Aegis Ashore [in Romania and Poland], but bring it into a form factor where we can integrate it with existing Army systems; then you’ve got layered defense.”

The company has also demonstrated ways to target and fire Standard Missile using a small computer instead of the Aegis Combat System. By untethering Standard Missile from Aegis, the missile can be integrating with Army systems relatively quickly through software upgrades, Gehr says, including with the future Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System. SM-3 and SM-6 would become additional firing options alongside Patriot, Thaad or the AIM-9X Sidewinder-equipped Indirect Fire Protection Capability.

“It just becomes another button on their system,” Gehr explains. “We don’t want to add a new interface.”

Thaad is the Army’s longest-range hit-to-kill interceptor, designed to knock out short to intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere.

SM-3 is an exoatmospheric interceptor. It is armed with a small “kill vehicle” designed to slam into incoming missiles on the edge of space. The latest version in regular production is the SM-3 Block IB.

The next version, called SM-3 Block IIA, is much thicker and heavier and is being developed along with Japan for Aegis BMD.

Raytheon says the heavyweight SM-3 Block IIA is also an option for the Army, specifically for ballistic missile defense. Raytheon and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) have been developing the missile over the past several years under a $2 billion contract with the Missile Defense Agency. The missile successfully completed its first intercept test in February. The second try failed, but the misfire has not been blamed on the missile or Aegis.

Age and a rapidly evolving threat set are taking their toll on the US Army’s venerable but combat proven PATRIOT radar. Sustainment issues emerging in the three-decade old system and the quickening pace of current and future threats, will soon preclude the Army customer from efficiently and simply adding a software, or comparable “upgrade”, to the system. For its part, Lockheed Martin used this week's Symposium to unveil its missile defence radar demonstrator – an active electronically scanned array (AESA) Radar for Engagement and Surveillance (ARES) – to stay in lock-step with the Army’s maturing requirement for a Low Tier Air & Missile Defense Sensor solution.

Mark Mekker, the company’s director of Ground Based Surveillance Radar, noted that while the Army’s requirements have not been fully articulated, his team used the ARES technology baseline as a stepping off point to, “focus on the technology building blocks of the radar system – the transmitter, receiver, signal processor, others.”

Peering into the future, Lockheed Martin also sought to mature that building block to needed performance levels, with the ability to scale the antenna size and other attributes based on final requirements – expected to be issued in the next 12-18 months. Mekker pointed out the AESA technology incorporates gallium nitride (GaN) transmitter technology and the benefits from this strategy including, “you can put out a lot more power and [do so] more efficiently, and achieve high performance levels.” The industry expert continued: “We’ve been working on GaN for ‘a few years’ – 10 or 15 – it’s a very mature technology now. And whereas the defense industry has not driven the demand for GaN it has been the commercial sector – the cell phone industry and others.”

Of interest, Lockheed Martin has an “open foundry” business model as it works with commercial foundries. As these suppliers incrementally mature their GaN technology in terms of power and other attributes every year or two, Lockheed Martin reaps the benefits – without having to invest in a GaN manufacturing capability. Mekker’s team is also bringing to bear cross-over technologies from other Lockheed Martin products – to permit it to deliver an affordable, Low Tier Air & Missile Defense Sensor solution quickly “to the fight."

"In one instance the platform structure and motion control structure system which levels it, is taken directly from the AN/TPQ-53 radar system, which Lockheed Martin continues to deliver to its US Army customer. Inside the system, what we are using are algorithms from our ballistic missile detection radar systems – the AN/TPS-59 and our MEADS programme which ran for more than a decade. These proven algorithms can do 360-degree coverage and the tracking of the threats we are after,” Mekker added and concluded: “Dual-band technology is where we have landed for bringing forth this Low Tier Air & Missile Defense Sensor solution. What that gives us, is we can do both surveillance and fire control in a single radar at an affordable price. So, instead of populating all at C-band, we can reduce that with S-band technology (surveillance) and C-band technology (fire control).”

If this is indeed true the move from X to C band was not unpredictable as they wouldn't have been cost competitive with Raytheon given the difference in T/R module cost of C and X band GaN components although the latter is getting more and more competitive in terms of cost as volume drives cost down.

The concept and technologies employed would make it one of the most innovative AESA radars for this particular application over the last many years. Despite Cree's and Lockheed's past S&T work in the field it will still retain some risk in light of Raytheon's over 1000 hours of testing that it has put on its AESA. But this does give a peek into what's next for solid state phased array radars.

anderson air base guam . due to lack of space its not vast , but does have dual runways and a lot of apron areas albeit close together in non optimal position. to the west is a large complex of underground munition bunkers.https://earth.google.com/web/@13.594332 ... UFNKRgBIAE

on west coast the navy has its own weapons bunkers and docks.

the ruins of a old airfield in NE corner houses satcom, radar and SAM/ABM unit.

in just 10 years they have poured money and converted the island into pearl harbour 2.0

Article in the New York Times by William J Broad and David E Sanger citing Michael Elleman of IISS says that North Korea’s Hwasong missile most likely used mothballed ex Soviet RD-250 liquid fuelled engine that was built at what is now Ukraine’s Yuzhmash plant:

Link to the cited article by Michael Elleman of IISS which says amongs others “Available evidence clearly indicates that the LPE is based on the Soviet RD-250 family of engines, and has been modified to operate as the boosting force for the Hwasong-12 and -14. An unknown number of these engines were probably acquired though illicit channels operating in Russia and/or Ukraine. North Korea’s need for an alternative to the failing Musudan and the recent appearance of the RD-250 engine along with other evidence, suggests the transfers occurred within the past two years.”:

Link to another article by Theodore A. Postol, Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says “We have identified this rocket motor as a being derived from a family of Russian rocket motors known as the RD-250 or RD-251” :

arun wrote:Article in the New York Times by William J Broad and David E Sanger citing Michael Elleman of IISS says that North Korea’s Hwasong missile most likely used mothballed ex Soviet RD-250 liquid fuelled engine that was built at what is now Ukraine’s Yuzhmash plant:

Link to the cited article by Michael Elleman of IISS which says amongs others “Available evidence clearly indicates that the LPE is based on the Soviet RD-250 family of engines, and has been modified to operate as the boosting force for the Hwasong-12 and -14. An unknown number of these engines were probably acquired though illicit channels operating in Russia and/or Ukraine. North Korea’s need for an alternative to the failing Musudan and the recent appearance of the RD-250 engine along with other evidence, suggests the transfers occurred within the past two years.”:

Link to another article by Theodore A. Postol, Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says “We have identified this rocket motor as a being derived from a family of Russian rocket motors known as the RD-250 or RD-251” :

IF the Transfer is Proven then they should come under Cat 2 sanctions of MTCR some ISRO and Glavkomas came under when we bought the Cryo Engine Legally it was not even illegal as it was a Global Tender.